AKA: N/A

Genre: Ecchi comedy

Length: OAV, 45 minutes

Distributor: VHS from US Manga Corps out of print.

Content Rating: 16+ (sex, profanity)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended:

Notes: Based on three manga short stories by U-Jin. The character of Toyama no Benbei is a weak parody of the historical "playboy" Toyama no Kinsan.

Rating:

U-Jin Brand

Synopsis

U-Jin Brand is a collection of three short and rather silly stories about lecherous guys and the gals who love to be taken by them. The first story deals with a superstitious pop song-writer with a habit of sleeping with each of the lovely singers he writes songs for. The second and third stories cover the adventures of Toyama no Benbei, a handsome man who, in exchange for a copy of a popular computer game title, will seduce/rape a woman for you. Mr. Benbei's services are often used for the purposes of blackmail or to chase a rival suitor away.

Review

Okay, here's the deal. From the back of the box, I suspected that U-Jin Brand was probably some kind of ecchi thing, but I figured, what the hey. I mean, it's short, and it's distributed by US Manga Corps, a mainstream company, not like Anime 18, or Softcel Pictures, or even ADV. So how bad could it be, huh?

Pretty darn bad, apparently. U-Jin Brand takes the word "gratuitous" and elevates it to a higher plane of existence. There is very little to redeem U-Jin Brand; indeed, U-Jin Brand has little to redeem itself with in the first place. If nothing else, one can view this thing as a case study of how to take something mediocre and turn it wretched.

The technical aspects of U-Jin Brand correspond to the mediocrity. Everything -- art, animation, and music -- is of average quality, with little to distinguish it from any other anime title you'll find. This in itself wouldn't be so bad, so long as the plot and characters are interesting enough to carry the title through.

And, of course, they aren't. The plots of each of the three shorts are several orders of magnitude thinner than the minimum distance the human eye can readily distinguish. Each story serves as a weak means to proceed from inane sex scene to inane sex scene. The "characters" (a misnomer at best) are all stereotyped and one-dimensional and can fit into either of two categories: men who live for nothing but to get under a woman's skirt, and women who live to have their skirts gotten under. One gets the impression that the whole thing was written by a bunch of fifteen year-old boys right after seeing their favorite blue movie.

In short, this is one title to avoid, not only because of the gratuitous sex and offensive stereotypes (which I should have seen coming, yes), but also because of the total lack of anything else that might be considered quality. U-Jin Brand manages to demean the audience's intelligence, its creators', men and women in general, and all of anime for that matter.

— Raphael See

Recommended Audience: Another one definitely not for kids. Lots of sex and non-casual nudity and some profanity. Of course, if you're an adult and you watch this (myself included), you deserve what you get. Ugh.